The Viper wouldn't be the Viper if it wasn't the most powerful model under the Chrysler umbrella. But with the arrival of the Hellcat engine in the Dodge Charger and Challenger, the Viper has fallen behind in the bragging rights department: where the new supercharged V8 produces 707 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque, the naturally aspirated V10 offers "only" 640 hp and 600 lb-ft – gargantuan output figures by almost any other standard, but crucially behind on the SRT power scale. Con

Since it hit the market with a bang, the SRT Viper has mainly soldiered on making nothing more than a whimper. Demand for the reborn, V10-powered rocket has struggled, although SRT boss Ralph Gilles remains committed to the slinky serpent, according to a report from Wards.

Launch control is one of the coolest recent technologies in the automotive realm. Push a button, follow a procedure, and you'll be rewarded with the best acceleration that a computer can be programmed to achieve. It's simple, and it works.

Nobody has ever accused the all-new 2013 SRT Viper of being slow, but even with the rebounding economy the high-performance coupe seems to be suffering from slow sales out of the gate. According to Automotive News, the Viper has sold 426 units since it went on sale in February with an additional 565 unsold units sitting around in dealer inventory, which shows that SRT was a little too optimistic in its initial sales expectations for the Viper.

Alright, there's no way the 455-horsepower Chevrolet Corvette Stingray beat the 640-hp SRT Viper, you say. Well, you're partially right. Edmunds ran them down a quarter-mile drag strip and the Viper did it in 11.72 seconds at 124.09 miles per hour to the Stingray's 12.39 seconds at 113.73 mph. The Viper did 0-60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds compared to the the Corvette's 4.1-second run. But the Chevrolet definitely pulled above its weight, and we see once again that horsepower doesn't mean ever

With production and sales of the SRT Viper in full swing, the high-performance coupe is receiving some minor changes for its sophomore year. The big news, of course, is a higher starting price of $99,395 (*plus a $2,600 gas-guzzler tax and $1,995 destination charge), which is an increase of $2,000 but adds more standard features like HD Radio with Navigation and Uconnect, a back-up camera and a 900-watt, 12-speaker Harmon/Kardon audio system.

Hertz has resurrected the spirit of the company's Rent-A-Racer program, albeit on a slightly different level. If that name sounds familiar, it should. Carroll Shelby famously struck a deal with the rental car company back in 1966, and the result was a fleet of Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 for rent. Later, those cars were sold as GT350-H models, and today they are valuable collector cars.

In Episode 36 of Motor Trend's Head 2 Head, now that the Corvette ZR1 is no more, Jonny Lieberman has to look overseas to the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series for a challenger with similar philosophy to the SRT Viper: long hood hiding a high-horsepower engine set way back, rear-wheel drive, tiny trunks. That puts the Viper's 8.4-liter V10 with 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque against the SLS AMG's 6.2-liter V8 with 622 hp and 468 lb-ft.

SRT has more models on offer than Chrysler. It has as many models as Ram, with hotted-up versions of the Dodge Charger and Challenger, Chrysler 300, and Jeep Grand Cherokee, plus the exclusive SRT Viper. Dodge is still the top of the choice heap, but SRT wants to wave its freak flag high after building its roster somewhat quietly. Since SRT can't roar through everyone's neighborhood, it's taking to television with its first-ever advertising campaign.

There are lots of ways to measure the performance of a car, but there's only one that is quintessentially American: the quarter mile. And while we've already seen a proper comparison test or two that puts the new (and also quintessentially American) SRT Viper on a racetrack, we've yet to see what it can do when put in the hands of a proper drag racer for an entire day of tire-burning performance testing. Now we do.

In one of the most interesting roundtable discussions we've seen in quite some time, the boys from Motor Trend, along with pro racing driver Randy Pobst, sat down with SRT head honcho Ralph Gilles to discuss the 2014 Viper. And the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, naturally. As you may remember, Motor Trend has filmed two videos pitting the latest Viper from SRT against the standard-bearing ZR1, with the Viper losing the first battle but barely eking out a victory with the upgraded TA model in the second

Almost a year to the day after SRT president and CEO Ralph Gilles first introduced – and kissed the fender of – the 2013 SRT Viper at the 2012 New York Auto Show, the high-performance coupe has begun shipping to dealers. The first production cars started rolling off the line at Chrysler's Conner Avenue Assembly plant in Detroit back in January (a facility Gilles lovingly compares to Santa's workshop), but The Detroit News is reporting that the cars just started heading to customers a

Motor Trend has got word that an SRT Viper ACR – the acronym for American Club Racing – is headed for a reveal in 2014. However, at the same time as SRT is working to maximize the model's performance, the report says there's an internally imposed performance ceiling on at least one aspect of the super coupe that will keep it from being all the Viper it could be.

The launch of the 2013 SRT Viper marked the first time the car has been introduced as a coupe rather than a roadster, but that didn't matter to buyers. According to Wards Auto, the initial run of 800 Vipers has already sold out with deliveries starting next month, and, even more impressively, SRT president Ralph Gilles reportedly said that more than 80 percent of those sales consisted of the sportier, more expensive Viper GTS model.

It's easy to play the "Would you rather have a New X or an Old Y with a bunch of upgrades?" game more often than we care to admit, but the crew at Car and Driver have taken bench racing to the next level with their latest video. In it, the magazine pits a brand-new 2014 SRT Viper against a highly modified 1997 Dodge Viper GTS. There are 16 years between the time this particular GTS rolled off the production line and when the new car bowed, but that doesn't mean the old snake's owners have been s

Hagerty Insurance, which specializes in covering cars already deemed classics, is out with its annual Hot List predicting this year's ten cars that will be future collectibles. Even though it stays under $100,000, it spans almost $74,000 in MSRPs starting with the $23,700 Ford Focus ST on the affordable end and peaking with the $97,395 SRT Viper.

Official production of the 2013 SRT Viper kicked off this month with VIN No. 001 rolling off the Conner Avenue Assembly plant to a small celebration that included the car's owner and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne. Now, The New York Times has released a video and some great pictures showing just what it takes to get the newest Viper from a bare frame and engine to the final product.

Last month, Motor Trend took over Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to perform one of the first head-to-head comparisons between the current Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and its newly redesigned nemesis, the SRT Viper. We've already gone over the article and amazing photographs of this epic all-American battle, and now, MT has provided a video of the deed in its latest "Head 2 Head" installment.

Our friends at Road & Track recently stopped by Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California, with the 2013 SRT Viper and found themselves a place to park between a Lamborghini Aventador and a Lexus LFA. Those machines might as well be the three musketeers of ludicrous exhaust notes, and rather than keep those 24 raging cylinders muffled, R&T set about conducting an orchestra of internal combustion. On seeing these three lined up, we were more than prepared to call the Viper victorious when it

First-time dynamometer runs for any production car are interesting business, at least for those with "car nerd" in their resumes. And the virgin public dyno testing of a new supercar like the SRT Viper GTS, well, that's just a bit o' heaven right there. So, when we heard that the number crunchers at Edmunds had gotten the new Viper into the test facility, we were hooked right away.

It's no secret the boys and girls at Motor Trend don't look at the 2013 SRT Viper through rose-tinted lenses. After all, the publication recently chose the Corvette ZR1 over the new supercar from Chrysler, saying the Chevrolet was easier to drive quickly. That's bad news given there's a new Corvette coming down the pike. But until now, we haven't been able to watch Motor Trend give the Viper a proper thrashing. Carlos Lago hopped behind the wheel of the V10-powered bruiser to give the machine a